Bloody Knuckles Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		2.5

Bloody Knuckles Blu-ray Movie Review

The hand that returns to bite you.

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson August 2, 2016

The severed hand that transforms into a living, violent hand is a recurrent trope appearing in diverse films across cinema history including Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac (1924), Karl Freund's Mad Love (1935), Robert Florey's The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), Newt Arnold's Hands of a Stranger (1962), Freddie Francis's omnibus Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), Oliver Stone's The Hand (1981), Sam Raimi's Evil Dead II (1987), Rodman Flender's Idle Hands (1999), among others. Canadian filmmaker Matt O'Mahoney attempts to breath new life into the subgenre with his directorial debut, Bloody Knuckles (2014). Set in present-day Canada, the film explores the restrictions of creative expression wrought by censorship and neo-fascist underlings. Travis (Adam Boys) is the irreverent comic strip creator of Vulgarian Invasions, an underground comic book that sardonically tackles sensitive topics pertaining to race, politics, sexuality, and S&M. At a launch party feting his new comic, Travis meets the local newspaper reporter, Amy (Gabrielle Giraud), who is doing a story on the series. The shady Chinese businessman Leonard Fong (Kasey Ryne Mazak) intersects in both Travis and Amy's professional pursuits. Amy is also working on a piece investigating Fong's alleged nefarious activities into the criminal world. Amy confronts Fong about his clandestine status as the mafia don of Golden Dragons but he refutes it by telling her he's a straitlaced, reputable businessman. Travis suspects that Fong may be behind funding toxic substances that have begun plaguing the city's people and its environment. In a recent issue of Vulgarian Invasions, Travis casts Fong in a most unflattering light. After one of Fong's thugs gets a hold of the comic, the gang captures Travis and saws off his drawing hand.

An artist in his lair.

The revenge of the dismembered hand becomes the focal point of the second half. O’Mahoney (who goes by Matt O.) clearly wants to show that the hand has a mind of its own. It's shown typing on the keyboard spoken messages through Travis' Speech to Text software. Travis and the hand become embroiled in a love/hate relationship that borders on the seriocomic and the ridiculous. While O’Mahoney delivers many homages to B-grade films, the underground movement, and exploitation cinema (especially Joe D’Amato), his closest cinematic model (structurally speaking) is Stone's The Hand. This underrated 1981 thriller is also about an eccentric cartoonist (played by Michael Caine) who loses his hand in a freak car accident. The hand comes back to life and harms anyone who gives the Caine character problems. Bloody Knuckles lacks the psychological complexity of Stone's second feature film. Instead of focusing on the inner tumult of Travis's psyche (which the film initially does), the narrative turns into a splatter fest. The gore and makeup effects are generally well-done and O’Mahoney says he made an effort to pattern them off Tom Savini's work. But the killings become homogenized and redundant. The camerawork is mostly pedestrian and outside of the lighting in the gay strip club, O’Mahoney is not very imaginative in his use of mise-en-scène.

O’Mahoney also ventures into dark S&M territory that Joel Schumacher broached in 8MM (1999). On the one hand, the "bad" masked man from Mr. Fong's gang relishes the torture he inflicts on Travis and his friends. And on the other hand, there is the benevolent Homo Dynamous (Dwayne Bryshun), a BDSM Travis creates in his comic that later teams up with the hand to extract vengeance on Fong and his goons. All of these elements could have worked had the script been more focused and the film's tone more consistent. Another aspect undercutting the movie's message is the all the Chinese characters are too one-dimensional. (They are also portrayed as misogynists and sexist pigs.) In addition, Detective Frank (Steve Thackray) is depicted as a douchebag and given little to do but pester Travis. O’Mahoney would have had a more compelling story if there had been better chemistry between the Boys/Giraud characters. Sparks really don't fly when Travis meets Amy and the romance feels forced.

Bloody Knuckles Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bloody Knuckles appears in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.78:1 on this AVC-encoded BD25 disc courtesy of Artsploitation Films. With the exception of the prologue and epilogue, Cinematographer Scooter Corkle shot most of the movie at night, imbuing it with a lot of low-key lighting. Overall, this is a quite pleasing high-definition transfer for a very low-budget film. The print is generally free of any source flaws. Skin tones appear natural without any digital manipulation. For darker scenes, there is thankfully no contrast boosting. The only anomaly seems to be some low level noise that creeps in on the black parts of the image. Altogether, only scant traces of DNR have been applied. Artsploitation has broken the film up into eight chapter stops.

Bloody Knuckles Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bloody Knuckles boasts a very clean and crisp DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Dialog is largely clear and audible. (There wasn't a moment where I needed to turn on the English SDH.) There is some dialog in either Mandarin or Cantonese and Artsploitation have provided embedded light yellow subtitles. The soundscape demonstrates a nice separation across all speakers. The surround channels are given special treatment to accent the severed hand's movements, sometimes off-screen. The sound track assembles a pastiche of original score and songs and the track renders them competently. Bloody Knuckles does not feature a lot of loud f/x so acoustics are deployed primarily in the front channels with low surrounds.

Bloody Knuckles Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Artsploitation has put together a good mix of extras. The feature-length "Director's Commentary" consists of an often coarse O'Mahoney musing about the film's script changes, locations, and budget difficulties. O'Mahoney fills the track with plenty of production anecdotes and contains only a gap or two. We next find three "Deleted Scenes" totaling about three minutes. They are presented in HD with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Artsploitation has also included two of O'Mahoney's short films. Adjust Tracking (2012) is the single best item on the disc. Running at five minutes, it is a self-reflexive take on VHS days and the snuff film. It makes a nice complement to the main feature. Electric Fence (2008) is another of O'Mahoney's shorts and runs nearly eighteen minutes. Next up are four short featurettes. "Hate Letter to Censorship" is a seven-minute sit-down with Matt Garrett interviewing O'Mahoney. "Diabolik DVD" finds O'Mahoney visiting an underground video store in Philadelphia that sells many of his favorite cult films and horror flicks. "Cinema Sewer" features O'Mahoney in discussion with Robin Bougie, editor of a Vancouver movie magazine. "Lunchmeat" is a brief interview with the editor of an e-zine devoted to VHS. My only quibble is that the interviews could have been a bit longer. Rounding out the extras is a trailer for Bloody Knuckles and bonus trailers for Children of the Night, Horsehead, and Cub. There is a "Play All" option for the supplements.

Bloody Knuckles Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

There are an infinite number of ways that O'Mahoney could have utilized agitprop techniques in Bloody Knuckles to argue the virtues of creative expression. Instead, the film amasses a compendium of tired clichés in the dismembered hand genre and lacks a tightly honed script. Artsploitation's Blu-ray earns high marks for a very good transfer and lossless sound mix. The supplements add value and context to the film. The disc is only recommended to devotees and diehards of B-horror.